Do You Know Where the Men Are

No, you're not crazy-there really aren't enough brothers to go around: 115 Black women in the United States for every 100 Black men 18 and over. Think back to when the numbers of Black boys in your class started to dwindle because the school system gave up on them and fast money beckoned. The streets led to lockup (586,300 Black men in federal and state prisons, compared with 35,050 Black women), fewer college graduates (38,103 Black men in 2001 versus 73,204 Black women) and unemployment (nearly 50 percent of Black men in New York City, for instance). That leaves many of us going solo unless we're willing to step outside our comfort zones of education level, race, ethnicity and, especially, social status. "I know guys who are educated, hardworking and ambitious," says William July II, a relationship expert and author, "but many women would look right past them because they don't pass the status test."

Where the Men Are Nationally there are 86 unmarried men for every 100 unmarried women. Among Blacks that ratio is 73 to 100. We wanted to know where to find the highest concentrations of single brothers. To do that, we compared single Black populations in the nation's top 100 major metropolitan areas-from Miami to Seattle. Killeen, Texas, anyone?